The most trusted network in America

2/7/13 6:37 PM EST

Republicans have little to cheer about these days. Their national party just lost a winnable presidential race, their primary voters handed the Senate to Harry Reid on a silver platter and their House majority caved to Barack Obama on taxes. Conservatives lost the fiscal cliff battle, walked away on the debt ceiling debate and backed into a speedy retreat on immigration.

2012 was brutal for the GOP brand any way you cut it. And now, as if to add insult to injury, a new 2013 poll claims that conservatives are even losing the television news PR battle.

PPP asked Americans which news organizations they trusted the most. And while the poll's headline screams that Fox News has hit a new low in the area of trustworthiness, the conservative network is still more trusted than most news outlets and is still beating all other cable news networks in ratings.

The troubling news for conservatives comes in the answer to what news outlet voters trust the most. The answer is PBS by a large margin.

So the network that Republicans like myself have been trying to defund for years is now easily the most revered in America. In fact, PBS was the only television news outfit that was more trusted by Americans than mistrusted. 52 percent of Americans told PPP that they trusted PBS while only 29 percent said they didn't.

The survey's results will have little impact on future elections but Republicans should view the poll as another example of how political attitudes have shifted under their feet on issues immigration, universal background checks and now the public funding an institution that conservatives believe should financially rise or fall on its own merit.